Ok, the world is mobile-first… so what happens next?

You only have to look around at your other passengers on the bus or train to know it. Mobile is where more and more consumers are spending their time. Having done some research (more of that below), it seems to be the same everywhere. Maybe you’re reading this on your phone right now!

We had a look around at some trends, which make for interesting reading. In Denmark, e-commerce revenue is growing at 7.4% CAGR through to 2023. Overall in the Nordics, 60% of residents (age 18–79) are said to have bought online in a normal month. In the UK, 78% of shoppers are now using phones to browse and buy. While over in the US, we noticed that mobile commerce (or m-commerce) is now 34% of all e-commerce sales.

Bridging the gap

Here’s another thing noted from the research. There are still many people preferring to use their mobile device for searching, and then buying once at home on their desktop or tablet.

According to this Deloitte PDF, the Nordics’ growth in mobile payments ‘ is driven by smartphone penetration and the creation of customer-centric mobile wallets making mobile payments more enticing to use’

Deloitte calls this the ‘browsing v purchasing gap’. For marketers, this gap definitely causes a few headaches when it comes to understanding customer journeys. When we’re investing in campaigns, we need a way to not only track ROI from each approach, but also to get a better idea of what our audience wants. This is going to involve a complete change in how we approach funnels and buying cycles. This is something covered in ‘Mobile is eating the world’, where author Brian Solis explains:

‘in mobile moments, intent and context count for everything. If you don’t have information that’s engaging, useful, and quickly discoverable, you lose out on conversion opportunities’.

As we all know, this 360-degree insight is the foundation we need and are all looking for. It’s key to delivering the best possible customer experience, something the analysts Gartner described as ‘the new marketing battlefront’. When you consider the expected rise of IoT and 5G, the battlefront is going to get much more complex, very soon. With the right platform, we can learn and adapt to this new reality, and I think build even better customer experiences. I’m excited by the challenge!